Ahh The Good Old Days

"Would that we had died at the LORD's hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread!But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!"

Do you remember that great old film "The Ten Commandments?  One of my favorite characters in this story is Edward G. Robinson who played some sort of Hebrew that was better off than most of the folks. You could depend on him to be the one to stir up trouble when trouble needed to be stirred up. He didn't really believe in all of this religious stuff, he was happy to make a comfortable living and to keep himself well nourished.  He scoffed when it came time to mark the door posts with blood so that the angel of death would pass over.  He thought it was all a bunch of nonsense and he went to bed without bothering to do it. It was lucky for him that someone, a Hebrew that loved his fellow Hebrews, marked the doorpost for him and he was saved on that fateful night. The Egyptians who in the morning were mourning the loss of all of the first born in their land begged the Hebrews to go and gave them gold and jewels and probably a road map to show them the fastest way out of town.  Every chance he got, Robinson's character stirred up the people. And when the way grew drear and hunger afflicted the children of Israel he reminded them of all the great food that they had back in good old Egypt.  You could almost smell the onions cooking in the fleshpots!  Moses, played by Charlton Heston, went to God.  You could almost hear God saying, "Yeah, Yeah, I hear them.  When are they going to get the idea that I am going to take care of them, Moses?"  Then he promises them flesh in the evening and bread in the morning.  The only losers in this story, of course, are the doves that got invited to dinner each night. Do you wonder why it took forty years to get to the promised land? A blind camel could stumble into it in a few weeks.  Oh well, that's that story of the Israelites, one stiff necked people, just like us. 

When the Hebrews were hungry, they began pining for food and I guess that the food they remembered in Egypt was pretty good.  Then again, anything is better when you have nothing.  What would they have to do to get their delicious Egyptian Pot-o-Flesh?  They would have to go back to Egypt, of course, and while they might get the food they craved, the would get the slavery that they did not crave back. 

So it is with us. We beg God to relieve us from this burden or that and when the way gets tough we look back and say that the good old days weren't so bad.  We forget that if we take up the sin again, we pick up the slavery to it.  Don't you find it amazing that over thousands of years we as a species have learned so little?  No wonder why God had to come to earth and save us.  We could do nothing for ourselves. 

In order to enter heaven, we have to be free of our attachments to sin. If we need to, we choose to go to Purgatory to clean up to ready ourselves to be in God's presence.  The Poor Souls need the prayers of the faithful on earth to help them.  Please remember them today.